---
title: "What is AMA (Ask Me Anything)? — Social Media Glossary | Postpone"
canonical_url: "https://www.postpone.app/social-media-glossary/ama"
last_updated: "2026-10-08T07:16:23.144Z"
meta:
  description: "AMA, short for Ask Me Anything, is an open Q&A format on Reddit where someone invites a community to ask them any question in a single thread."
  "og:description": "AMA, short for Ask Me Anything, is an open Q&A format on Reddit where someone invites a community to ask them any question in a single thread."
  "og:title": "What is AMA (Ask Me Anything)? — Social Media Glossary"
  "twitter:description": "AMA, short for Ask Me Anything, is an open Q&A format on Reddit where someone invites a community to ask them any question in a single thread."
  "twitter:title": "What is AMA (Ask Me Anything)? — Social Media Glossary"
---

**Reddit**

# AMA (Ask Me Anything)

AMA, short for Ask Me Anything, is an open Q&A format on Reddit where someone invites a community to ask them any question in a single thread.

[**Reddit **post scheduler](https://www.postpone.app/platforms/reddit-post-scheduler)

Reddit's take on the live interview — except the audience controls the questions. A host opens a thread, introduces themselves, and the community decides what gets asked by upvoting the questions they care about most.

## Where AMAs Happen

The spiritual home is r/IAmA, which has hosted presidents, astronauts, and convicted hackers. But AMAs run across Reddit. r/Entrepreneur features founders sharing real revenue numbers. r/Science hosts researchers explaining their latest papers. Smaller subreddits run AMAs with niche experts who'd never land a podcast booking but are exactly who that community wants to hear from.

You don't need fame. You need relevance to the room you're in. A tax accountant doing an AMA in r/personalfinance during tax season gets more genuine engagement than most celebrity appearances.

## How to Not Blow It

Post your thread 30-60 minutes before you start answering. Let questions pile up and get voted on so you tackle the most popular ones first. Answer with detail — one-line responses signal you don't care enough to engage properly.

Be specific and honest. Reddit detects corporate speak instantly. The AMAs that go viral are the ones where someone says something surprisingly real — a CEO admitting their biggest mistake, a surgeon debunking health myths they're tired of seeing.

Don't dodge hard questions. Woody Harrelson's 2012 AMA became infamous when he kept redirecting every answer to promote his movie Rampart. Reddit still references it over a decade later as the gold standard of how not to do an AMA.

For brands and founders, this is a credibility play. You're not pushing content at anyone. You're proving expertise by answering unscripted questions from skeptical strangers. The thread stays on Reddit permanently, gets indexed by search engines, and works as social proof long after the live session ends.

Plan your AMA around a specific topic or milestone — "I grew my SaaS to $1M ARR, AMA" outperforms a generic "I'm the CEO of X, AMA" every time. Give people a reason to be curious. Show up with something real to share, answer the uncomfortable questions, and stay longer than you planned.

**Example**

Barack Obama's 2012 AMA on r/IAmA generated over 23,000 comments and temporarily crashed Reddit's servers. Niche AMAs work just as well — a cybersecurity consultant answering questions in r/sysadmin builds more targeted credibility than any ad campaign.

## **Why It Matters**

AMAs put you in unscripted conversation with your exact audience. Done well, they build trust no ad can replicate and create evergreen content that ranks in Google for years.

See how Postpone handles this in our [**Reddit post scheduler**](https://www.postpone.app/platforms/reddit-post-scheduler).

## **Related Terms**

[Comment Thread](https://www.postpone.app/social-media-glossary/comment-thread) [Karma](https://www.postpone.app/social-media-glossary/karma) [Moderator / Moderation](https://www.postpone.app/social-media-glossary/moderator-moderation) [OP (Original Poster)](https://www.postpone.app/social-media-glossary/op-original-poster) [Subreddit](https://www.postpone.app/social-media-glossary/subreddit)

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